Ahead of the poll, UPA chaiperson Sonia Gandhi on Monday hosted a
lunch for UPA constituents and the parties supporting it from outside,
which projected a complete picture of unity. Trinamool Congress MPs attended Gandhi's lunch and the party is
expected to go public with its support Ansari ahead of the polls. Not only all UPA constituents but also the chiefs of Samajwadi Party
and BSP Mualyam Singh Yadav and Mayawati attended the lunch. The two leaders, arch rival in Uttar Pradesh politics, had not attended any such programme together for several years.

Mohammad Hamid Ansari was born in Calcutta (now renamed Kolkata) on
April 1, 1937, though his family hailed from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh.
The grand nephew of former Congress President Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, a
leader of the Indian independence movement, Ansari studied at Shimla's
St. Edwards High School and St. Xavier's College of the University of
Calcutta.
A two-doctorate degree holder, he joined the Indian Foreign
Service in 1961. He was Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates,
Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and High Commissioner to Australia.
He also served as New Delhi’s Permanent Representative to the United
Nations based in New York.

A Padma Shree awardee, Ansari became Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh
Muslim University in May, 2000 and held the post till March,
2002. Ansari is also known for his role in ensuring compensation to the
victims of the Gujarat riots and pushing for a complete re-look into the
relief and rehabilitation for riot victims since 1984.
He also dealt with criticism for being non-political when he took
over as vice-president in 2007 in his own inimitable way. ”No citizen is
apolitical; as a citizen, by definition, has to take interest in public
affairs,” he had then said.

Ansari is the second Vice
President to be re-elected after S Radhakrishnan who was the first to
get two terms from 1952 to 1962. An affable and well-read person, Ansari
was the second choice of Congress president Sonia Gandhi
for the President's post and lost out to Pranab Mukherjee due to some
brinkmanship by TMC leader Mamata Banerjee and SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Marhaba/Khushamadeed/Welcome

Dear visitor,If you recognize the following pictures then you are at home. If not then you are welcome as a guest. Here you'll find some tidbits related to some thing called Aligarh Movement with a tilt towards issues related to Science in Islamic context.